“Yes, what kind of a transformation is this?” added a major. “You've certainly come back with a face very different from the one with which you left us!”
Dick turned fiery red. He suddenly became conscious that he had a left ear of enormous size, purple and swollen, that his left eye was closing fast, that the blood was dripping from cuts on either cheek, that the blood had flowed down the middle of his forehead and had formed a little stalactite on the end of his nose, that his chin had been gashed in five places by a strong fist, and that he had contributed his share to the bloodshed of the war.
“If I didn't know these were modern times,” said Warner, “I'd say that he had just emerged from a sanguinary encounter bare-handed in the Roman arena with a leopard.”
Dick glared at him.
“It was you who gave the alarm of fire, was it not?” asked Colonel Winchester.
“Yes, sir. I saw the man who set the fires and I pursued him through the garden and into the ravine that runs behind it.”
“Your appearance indicates that you overtook him.”
Dick flushed again.
“I did, sir,” he replied. “I know I'm no beauty at present, but neither is he.”
“It looks as if it had been a matter of fists?”